Police: Woman's lie snares innocent man

Athens-Clarke police are looking to arrest a Lilburn woman they say lied when she claimed that an armed man broke into a Five Points house where she was babysitting Tuesday and stole more than $1,000.

The woman made up the story to cover up the fact that she stole the money, according to police.

Investigators took out arrest warrants Thursday morning charging 24-year-old Erica Tucker with theft by taking and falsely reporting a crime, police said. She was told of the warrants and given the chance to turn herself in, but she hadn't as of late Thursday afternoon.

News reports of Tucker's story panicked neighbors in Five Points, an area of well-established houses bordering the University of Georgia campus, police said, and nearly sent an innocent man to jail.

Tucker said she was baby-sitting a couple's children in their house on Meadowview Road when a man with a gun broke through the back door at about 9 p.m. and demanded money, police said.

The woman took the children to a neighboring house where a resident called 911.

Tucker gave police a description of the man, and they found and detained a man on Paris Street who fit the description, police said.

The man was taken back to the house, where Tucker "identified him as the person who'd done it, 100 percent," Athens-Clarke police Capt. Clarence Holeman said.

Tucker told officers the man stole about $400 and money orders totaling $625, according to police.

But investigators were skeptical of the woman's claims from the start.

She told police he got in the door by breaking a window, but officers found glass shards outside of the house, showing the window was broken from inside, Holeman said.

The man officers took into custody was walking to work, and couldn't have made the distance from Five Points to Paris Street, more than a mile, in the minutes it took police to find him, the Criminal Investigations Division supervisor said.

Investigators grilled the woman at police headquarters for two hours before she confessed that she made up the story, he said.

"The more we talked to (Tucker), the more we realized he couldn't have done it," Holeman said.

"What bothers me more than anything about this whole deal is we came close to putting an innocent man in jail based on her identification," he added. "She was so nonchalant about letting someone else take the fall."